[BNM] AVG v.8.0 Upgrade

Sun May 4 19:11:22 BST 2008

I have always trusted AVG, and for years its been the only one I've recommended to clients, and used myself.. No annual subscription, very small memory footprint/cpu usage, high detection rate. Yes, the free version, is getting buried deeper and deeper in Grisoft's site.. and every trick in the book is used to try and get you to buy the 'premium' version, but you cant really blame them for that. 

In terms of firewalls: If behind a properly configured half-decent router's firewall, or any other hardware firewall, and with XP SP2's (or higher) own firewall switched on, I don't currently see a real need for any third party firewalls.. gone are the days of win98/me/2000 and Zone Alarm.. why have any extra piece of software interfering, when you don't need it? 

Yes, I have ran some scan's with AVG and it has misdiagnosed 1 or 2  trojans.. but these can easily be added to an exception list. To use the analogy of a spam filter, better to have one or two false positives, than to let spam through.. 

For general every day use, I recommend AVG as an antivirus solution, Spybot S&D for anti-spyware, and if you ever need to scan for root kits.. AVG's anti root kit software has always done the job for me...

I'm sticking with AVG for the time being, it has done an excellent job in the past, although I will be keeping a close eye on it to make sure it behaves.. It certainly looks a  lot less eastern-block now!

Steve

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From: Alan Pike 
Sent: Sunday, May 04, 2008 5:01 PM
To: Brighton New Media 
Subject: Re: [BNM] AVG v.8.0 Upgrade

On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 1:22 PM, Chris Billett <chris at chrisbillett.net> wrote:
> On 04/05/2008 13:03, "Nick Wilsdon" wrote:
>
>> AVG have acknowledged that there maybe conflicts but their only
>> suggestion is that you uninstall all those other programs and rely
>> solely on their software ;)
>
> Why would you want any more? I'd always suggest finding one you trust,

Yeah but, AVG was one that I trusted, it was a nice application with a
simple unfussy interface, and a small resource footprint that did what
it says on the tin. Sadly they seem to be trying very hard to make
more money by going down the "omg omg the internet's going to kill you
and all your children and steal your money unless you give us some
money and install our immensely bloated internet security suite that
will protect you from every known thing on the internet. Ever." route
that Norton and McAffee use.  Which is a great shame.
Had a right old job configuring the firewall part to let a client
share files on a 2 pc network, ended up ticking the box saying "allow
all" which you would think would be a bad thing, but apparently not.
Intuitive it was not.  kept resetting itself to not allow any
networking, then started working.  I have no idea why.
I've just checked on my  reseller page with avg and it appears to
still be allowing me to buy copies of avg anti-virus, but it doesn't
give a version number. Ho hum. should contact them and find out what
they're up to, but can't be bothered.
anyway, dragging myself back to Nicks question, I've only tried avast
and it seemed fussy and with a god awful interface.  Anything where
you can have a choice of skins makes me suspicious. Its a flippin
utility for crying out loud, you shouldn't even notice it unless its
all gone wrong, why oh why would anyone want to re-skin an AV. Jeez.
Kids these days.  And it didn't get rid of the virus that some clever
sod had managed to install on their pc.
Boo.

> Malware always has been and always will be a cultural/social issue, because
> it preys on human mistakes and stupidity by people.

Absolutely.  I've had clients who I installed clamwin
http://www.clamwin.com on for chrissakes, years ago, who use their
computers 10-12 hours a day 6 days a week who've never had any virii,
and I get calls from people with virii who have so called internet
security suites installed.
>
> But, y'know, there are lots of other opinions on the matter.

yes, but I'm right.
Bah humbug.
-- 

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